Friends of mine are opening a gaming store and they want me to demo Edge of the Empire during their grand opening weekend. I've decided to run a four-hour block, like a convention game, with pre-gen characters. I could run it a couple times that weekend.

With this style, and for new players, how much do I need to worry about Motivation and Obligation? Not a lot, right? Mechanically, those play heavily into campaign use, but largely, would only be descriptive for a one-shot. Correct?

Also, for the pre-gen characters, I think I want to have one from each Career, and definitely keep it to the Specs from the core book. This way, there's a solid variety of characters on the table to choose from.

I'm still working on the actual scenario in my head, but I think it might involve being hired by an unscrupulous individual to salvage a wrecked ship out in space. Ideas along these lines would be awesome and appreciated.

The Under a Black Sun and Rescue at Glare Peak one-off scenarios FFG ran for their Free RPG days did include Obligation and Duty, although not Motivation.

The way they set it up, the pre-generated characters could take on additional Obligation (or spend additional Duty) for minor, pre-determined benefits. However, characters with higher Obligation (or lower Duty) would face stiffer resistance throughout the adventure. For example, a Smuggler with higher Obligation might start with an Actuating Module on his blaster pistol, but midway through the adventure he might be accosted by a small-time bounty hunter because of his debts to the local crime lord. He could talk his way out or evade the hunter altogether, but he wouldn't have had to in the first place if he wasn't in debt.

I think this is a pretty good way to go about it. It introduces the concepts without centering the entire adventure on their mechanics.

Under a Black Sun and it's pre-generated characters are available on the Edge of the Empire Support page. It's a good resource even if you don't run the scenario itself.

I would do what I could to give Obligation some meaning. Like Joker Two says, Under a Black Sun has great ideas about how to do that. The Rebellion Day adventure was similar; having a higher Duty score helped the players in the adventure, but they could "spend" Duty to unlock powerful upgrades to their character.

Motivation can be inferred from a backstory, so the job can mostly done there.

The ideas for pregens sound solid. I would also make sure they have complimentary Characteristics (it's helpful to have a 3 in every characteristic, or 4 if you can manage, represented throughout the party) and skills, and also make sure their skills are well-suited to the adventure.

(Edit: spelling)

Thank you for the Under a Black Sun info. I'll take a gander at it and see how to incorporate Obligation into the one-shot. Meanwhile, I've been creating my pre-gens. I've decided to incorporate Careers and Specs from both Edge and Age since my friends will have both core books/games on their shelves. I made seven characters even though I suspect I'll have five or six players. This way, there's a nice bit of variety to choose from. I have...

Human Smuggler: Scoundrel

Human Soldier: Commando

Trandoshan Hired Gun: Mercenary

Duro Ace: Pilot

Twi'lek Engineer: Mechanic

Droid Colonist: Doctor

Human Colonist: Politico, Force-Sensitive Emergent

Next is to write up a one or two paragraph description for each character. At cons, I like to have the players choose their characters strictly by description with no idea what the actual numbers are until after they've chosen.

Then I'll create an adventure that makes use of everyone's skill sets and is not overly complicated.

This isn't exactly new stuff, but when I hear about deep space ship salvage, I usually think of one thing, old separatist battle cruisers that got lost in deep space after the shut down order was given. The players could be sent to retrieve some information from the ships astrogation computer. Perhaps the ship was last escorting a treasure ship and left it in unknown space at coordinates logged in the astrogation computer. The players have to cut in, and make there way to the auxiliary power supply and restart the generator so they can access the information. Then of course once power is restored, the defensive systems and partial droid power is restored, causing the players to have to fight there way back to the navigation computer and exit.

I know its not the most original, but I like it for dark, floating dead ships in the middle of nowhere. You could even add some other flavorings like: The ship is hours from plowing into a gas giant, Old recordings of the living crew recount the last hours of the ships life, Or maybe some others find the ship after your group is onboard.

Hope this gives you ideas.

Darthslash

It does indeed, Darthslash (and welcome to the boards!). I like it. As I said, I want this scenario to be fairly uncomplicated. I want a variety of encounters to let all the characters shine and run through many of the game's mechanics.

Encounter: the PCs wheel and deal with their contact and receive the mission.

Encounter: research and rumors

Encounter: traveling to the area

Encounter: the hulk. The PCs have to board the vessel, get power at least partially restored, fight mobs of B1 battle droid minions (perhaps a single tactical droid nemesis as well), get the loot and/or lucre, and get off the ship.

Encounter: escape! A couple vulture droids can give chase for a simple space combat encounter.

Encounter: return to the contact for final wheeling and dealing. but something is wrong!

Encounter: the finale.

Perhaps something like this is a simple outline for the scenario. Ideas to flesh it out?

Sounds fine.

As for the motivation and obligation I have always assumed they're involved with each other such as one beginner game character trying to rescue her sister from slavery from the Hutt she was employed by before she joined the other characters in an escape attempt intended to rescue her sister as payment for her help in their escape.

Maybe have some of the characters' having been former members of that ship's crew or a sister ship so they know what they're getting into over there and have their own reasons for going.

Could have them trying to discover what happened to a family member who served aboard that ship for example, nothing fancy just something you can explain in a paragraph for them and you know what they'll find if they follow up on that subplot of course this way you don't have to roll for whose motivation or obligation comes up... they do by playing your adventure!

My first glance at your scenario suggested to me they were completing this task to pay off some obligation, maybe if they want to do the rebel part have Imperials turn up as they head out so you can run a short chase scene with TIEs until they can jump out of the system before the Star Destroyer can get within tractor beam distance...

They only need to go into combat with the TIEs if they want to so allowing them the chance to outpace and jump clear of the system might be enough excitement for them to start with.

Oh dear now I'm complicating things again!